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Species as Explanatory Hypotheses: Refinements and Implications

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Abstract

The formal definition of species as explanatory hypotheses presented by Fitzhugh (Marine Biol 26:155–165, 2005a, b) is emended. A species is an explanatory account of the occurrences of the same character(s) among gonochoristic or cross-fertilizing hermaphroditic individuals by way of character origin and subsequent fixation during tokogeny. In addition to species, biological systematics also employs hypotheses that are ontogenetic, tokogenetic, intraspecific, and phylogenetic, each of which provides explanatory hypotheses for distinctly different classes of causal questions. It is suggested that species hypotheses can not be applied to organisms with obligate asexual, parthenogenetic, and self-fertilizing modes of reproduction. Hypotheses explaining shared characters among such organisms are, instead, strictly phylogenetic. Several implications of this emended definition are examined, especially the relations between species, intraspecific, and phylogenetic hypotheses, as well as the limitations of species names to be applied to temporally different characters within populations.

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Notes

  1. Throughout this paper, I intentionally avoid use the more common phrase, ‘shared similarities among members of two or more species.’ As I (Fitzhugh 2005a, 2006b, 2008b) deny that species have the status of class constructs, individuals, or natural kinds, in lieu of being explanatory hypotheses, it would be entirely incorrect to connote some sort of membership relation between organisms and species.

  2. Throughout this paper, formal names of species will be indicated using uninomials, rather than the binomial form required by the International Codes of Nomenclature (e.g., ICZN 1999). As was pointed out by Fitzhugh (2008b), and in this paper, since hypotheses in the categories of species and genus are inferred from entirely different sets of premises applying different theories, the two classes of hypotheses stand separate from one another. The implication is that while the binomial requirement allows for monotypic genera and other taxa, those constructs are, by definition, empirically vacuous as they do not refer to any phylogenetic hypotheses. The solution is to acknowledge that names of species hypotheses should stand on their own, distinct from phylogenetic (supraspecific) hypotheses.

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Acknowledgments

Sincere thanks are extended to Drs. Francisco Vergara-Silva and Rasmus G. Winther for inviting me to participate in their symposium, “Systematics, Darwinism, and the Philosophy of Science,” held at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City. I am also very grateful to Drs. Brian Brown and Jody Martin for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.

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  1. Research & Collections Branch, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA, 90007, USA

    Kirk Fitzhugh

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Fitzhugh, K. Species as Explanatory Hypotheses: Refinements and Implications. Acta Biotheor 57, 201–248 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10441-009-9071-3

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